Last month, after thirteen months of negotiations with the nation’s largest elected school board, public school educators in Los Angeles announced a strike deadline. If the district doesn’t agree to a new contract by April 14, the roughly 38,000 members of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) will walk off the job. They will be joined by the 30,000 members of SEIU 99, which represents cafeteria workers, bus drivers, and special education assistants, as well as the 3,000 members of the principals’ association, the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA).
The teachers’ union has a track record of winning with strikes. A six-day strike in 2019 secured a 6 percent raise, common-good demands for black and immigrant families, and enforceable class-size caps — a first for the district. In 2023, a solidarity strike with school support staff led to a 21 percent salary increase over three years, bringing first-year pay to around $68,000. But those gains have since been eaten up by the rising cost of living in Los Angeles, where housing prices have surged and inflation has outpaced wages. Today one in five educators in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) earns a salary that qualifies them for low-income housing.
UTLA is proposing an overhaul of the salary schedule that would bring starting pay to $80,000 and amount to an average 17 percent raise across the bargaining unit over two years, with the largest increases going to the newest teachers. The union is also demanding further class-size reductions for eleventh and twelfth graders, backed by a $75-per-day penalty for violations.
The announcement represents the largest potential work stoppage in a statewide round of contract fights led by many of the largest locals of the California Teachers Association (CTA) and the California Federation of Teachers (CFT), both of which UTLA is affiliated with. With recent contract wins in school districts across California — including Oakland, Sacramento,…
Auteur: George Kates
